The real stories from inside the F1 paddock

The future of James Key

James Key, the former technical director of Sauber says that he has a job in England waiting for him. Having done a little homework, it seems that Key is not going to be a Formula 1 technical director any longer but instead is going to another high profile in the industry.

My spies tell me that the Englishman will be heading to Norfolk, for a new role as technical director of all motorsport activities at Lotus Cars, where he will probably report to the director of motorsport Claudio Berro.

The car company’s approach to motorsport in the last 18 months has been to slap a badge on anything that money can buy. The firm is contracted to pay large sums of money to the Lotus F1 Team, although it does not own the Enstone operation, even if Dany Bahar, the Lotus CEO, has a seat on the board.

In addition to that Lotus is supplying Lotus-branded Judd engines to IndyCar teams, several of which will run in Lotus liveries in 2012. These will include the works team Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, which will field Oriol Servià and one other; in addition to Bryan Herta Autosport’s Alex Tagliani; Dragon’s Sébastien Bourdais and HVM’s Simona de Silvestro. There is the possibility of individual aerodynamic kits for teams in the future, so this is one area where Key could make a difference.

Lotus is also funding teams in GP2 and GP3, in association with ART Grand Prix, which has recently changed its name to Lotus Grand Prix (an interesting development given that Lotus does not own its own Grand Prix team and ART has long had F1 ambitions) and the French squad will be running teams in black and gold livery with GP2 cars for Esteban Gutierrez and James Calado, and GP3 cars for Daniel Abt and Aaro Vainio.

In addition Lotus Cars is paying for Lola LMP2 cars, which will appear in black and gold colours in 2012 with Colin Kolles’s Kodewa team. This is instead of the original plan for Lotus to build its own LMP2 prototypes, that project having been shelved in October.

There are also expected to be Lotus GTs in racing and rallying, although it is not yet clear whether these will run in black and gold liveries or not.

While paying for signage on other people’s cars is one way to get publicity, there is a danger that people will not see such projects as being real Lotus programmes and thus it is perhaps wiser to reduce the scatter-gun effect and concentrate on ares where the firm can be a manufacturer.

I don’t understand the logic behind comments like this. When Benettons were finally rebadged as Renaults, were you up in arms about Renault trying to claim the heritage of Benetton and Toleman? Teams change hands. Get over it.

To me, what’s more interesting is that they seem to be playing down the Lotus aspect so prevalent last year and instead focusing on being “Team Enstone”. I hope they’re not rebadged again any time soon; a team needs continuity.

It may be just me, but I think we’re beyond the point where anybody with even half an idea of sports economics can look at the volume of Lotus badges out there and believe that a small Norfolk company is really supporting that much involvement in top end motor sport on 3 continents.

A company that’s a road sports car producer but hasn’t actually produced any new models or engines for about 5 years, yet seems to be able to operate successfully at the top end of technical innovation on racetracks around the world.

This has got to be the most expensive ad campaign ever, and has possibly just peaked before starting to ratse more questions than it answers. A potential charade from here on in.

I can see the idea and at the outset there was some merit, but your actual core business is usually required to keep pace with your advertising if your going to turn things around.

But then again, how many of the current heads at Lotus have ever actually had to run a company that makes money?

The average person will not see, nor be aware of the back room politics of this dance. All they will see is the Lotus brand in their face.
My question is, what happens when the money runs out. What happens when the Executive Board decide that this throwing money around for the return, is not the answer.
Then the rubber hits the road… In the continuing saga called… Lotus… I think.
You have spies… Cool.
And here I thought the Mole, (and entourage), were the only ones to get info like this.

Actually the money ran out several years ago, both Group Lotus and Lotus International Group (owners of GL) are (oops! Were) supported only by massive loans from Proton and it’s associated banks, the interest on those loans must now have reached a figure approaching half of Lotus cars annual turnover. But with Proton now having been sold and a proper business attitude from it’s new owners it is very likely that Lotus Group International (Plus engineering ) will be sold. As it is the additional debt burden that Bahar has conjured up for Lotus Cars in the shape of his British Porsche program effectively renders the company a massive black hole. So any buyer would have to be so seriously rich, as not to notice half a billion or so out of petty cash which may be necessary to pay off everything and either complete the tooling and provision the line or go back to something sensible in the Lotus car range. This just to get level, stopping any form of racing for a year or two other than own make series, would be my bet.

So for Mr Key I suspect, he did not get a look at the accounts before taking the job, it may be just temporary thing.

As a contributor Lotus doesn’t blip positive on the balance sheet. As a money-sink it’s not so much a red flag as Tianenmen Square in full ‘bannered’ flow.

Most of the money so far seems to have been spent on ads (inc sponsorship) and doing drawings.
I’m sure some development has been contracted in-house (!!??!).
Car sales………..naah.

So –

Leverage the consultancy, but its B2B so no advertising. Results will have to speak for themselves. That will make money.

Cut all road car production not paying its way – That’d be the entire range.

Keep a specialist road car production facility prepared to build cars from the existing range – on-demand but at a ‘pays-its-way price’.
let it develop and prototype a hyper-car, hopefully hybrid. Low volume/High Price.
Keeps the name alive, keeps their hand in, doesn’t cost as much as they’re already spending. And hey, it might sell.

They’re not really involved in motor racing – so if they’re not building or running it – cut all sponsorship and get out.

Finally – get this all down on paper, then split out the consultancy and sell to a specialty engineering co (or even a race-related co), and sell the rest to a Russian for 5 to 8 tines what it’s worth.
(They’re usually happy to pay. They’re not stupid, they know the real price but for something so cheap it’ll make a good starter project for their kids)

You have to give Mr Bahar credit for actually (sort of) bringing the Evora to the market. Perhaps with some actual success he may be able to get squillions to build cars in Ireland or somewhere… can someone sales graph Evora vs DMC DeLorean? Which has been more sucessful?

Lotus should be prototype racing, right?. Pehaps the FIA can fold F1 racing into prototypes, a support category type scenario. Double the action, triple the relevance.

The old fashioned F1’s would make a fantastic warm up race.

The new Toyota hybrid prototype is a beast. If F1 cars did look like the Adrian Newey Gran Turismo 5 car, and you put it on the nightly news, 4 billion people around the world would say “I didn’t know an F1 car looked like that” and maybe watch the next race. This could possibly be good for business.

The Lotus Evora was launched at the British International Motor Show in 2008. Dany Bahar joined Lotus in September 2009, just after the first Evoras were delivered to private customers. According to figures released by the Dept of Transport the number of Evoras registered in the UK at the end of 2010 was 299.